Hadeon Lands is Charging $35 for a DLC Certificate

How low can publishers and developers go when it comes to DLC? Pretty damn scummy, if I do say so myself. Enter Hadeon Lands, a text adventure that could be compared to Dark Souls in terms of difficulty, but is in... well text form. Well Hadean Lands' developer decided to take advantage of DLC sales by introducing a certificate for the $12 title, which actually costs $35.

Yes, just a certificate. With words. With no attachment to the game whatsoever.

Hadean%20Lands%20Certificate.jpg

For $35, you can download the certificate in PDF and JPG formats. Apparently:

"This DLC pack contains a high-quality certificate saying that YOU, the player, solemnly promise to finish Hadean Lands without looking at any hints or walkthroughs on the Steam forums or anywhere else on the Internet."

"That's all! You print out the certificate, sign it, and hang it on the wall. This is strictly on the honor system. The DLC does not change the behavior of the game at all."

So why is it pricey in the first place? Well Kotaku reached out to Plotkin, who replied with this:

“When I was a kid, an Infocom text adventure cost $35 brand new. Today, an indie graphical adventure costs... well, it varies, but The Witness is $40.”

“I would love to say that my text adventure is worth $40. Okay, I don’t think I can swing that in the Steam market. Maybe if there were a separate commercial game platform for hard-core text adventure fans, I’d price the game at $40-ish there and $12-ish on Steam. But there isn’t! Oh well. This way, I can at least hint at how I value Hadean Lands.”

“Another thought: Stephen’s Sausage Roll is unashamedly $30. Plenty of discussion has been chewed out over that, but one comment I’ve seen repeatedly—from people who bought the game and enjoyed it—is that the high price keeps them invested. ‘If this was a $5 game I’d just close the game window, but after paying $30 I want to kick its butt.’ That sort of thing.

“I wanted a way for players to buy into Hadean Lands at that level of investment. Again, I didn’t think I could *require* it. But as an optional challenge, which a player could opt into? No reward except for a nice certificate and the knowledge that they’d made the choice? Sure. That makes sense.”

“And: It’s funny. I mean, I think it’s funny. I don’t want to kick the joke to death, but people seem generally to take it in good humor.”

“And: I’ve sold at least one certificate so far. Win!”

I suppose it's like a donation system in this case. If you feel that the game is worth more, than you can certain throw more money at Plotkin.

So it isn't a complete ripoff, I suppose!